This past Wednesday, wegg® had the pleasure of hosting the Industry Segment Manager of Retail and Consumer Goods for UPS, Cristina Bandal. Bandal lead one of our free online wegginars®, which provide monthly, accessible education to women entrepreneurs everywhere. Bandal’s talk covered how to overcome the obstacles that people face when trying to sell their products to the global market. She also answered the questions of wegginar® participants. Read their inquiries, and her responses, below:

What’s the single biggest challenge on why people don’t setup an online storefront? Setting up an international store may sound complicated if you are thinking of creating a country site – but with only a few enhancements, you can make international customers feel at home.

What are your thoughts on how to factor in taxes, (shipping and duty), to price my products profitably, yet make them affordable to my customers? With the solution available, your catalogue will provide the information needed to calculate a duty and tax, and offer a landed cost to your customers (and protect you from abandoned goods!)

How does our current trade war with China impact the information presented in this wegginar®? Whatever tariff regulations are passed are updated to protect the shipments.

Is there a way to target one foreign market when I launch my e-commerce site so that I can test the waters? YES!! You can choose what countries to target.

What’s the best way to setup a payment method, in your own currency or the customer’s? International consumers would like to see their own currency to avoid surprises. By using the UPS i-parcel solution, you are protected by allowing transactions to be processed through UPS, and provide fraud protection.

To read Bandal’s extended answers to these questions, and more, you can view the full presentation (PDF) from the wegginar®, here. wegg® was honored to have Bandal share her experience and knowledge with us.

If you were not able to participate in this month’s wegginar®, we already have registration open for our 12/5 talk with Andrew Molinsky, Ph.D. He will talk about how, “if you are not outside your comfort zone, you won’t learn anything.” Register here.

International expansion offers growth and the opportunity to not only scale a business, but to diversify as well. And you don’t need a big investment to pull it off. Here are two cases to prove it.

Chris-Tia Donaldson, founder of Chicago-based Thank God It’s Natural, a line of hair care products for textured hair, grew her global audience through social media—the international orders and distribution requests flowed in from there. The question for Chris was never should I do this [go global]; it was more, where should I go first?

Jamie (pictured) and Stephanie Kaplan, the sisters who founded Chicago’s Pinch Provisions, which makes “emergency” kits packed with miniature beauty products, bandages and other essentials, saw the opportunity to grow their business internationally fairly quickly but the key to exporting the kits was based on which regulations they thought they could meet as quickly as possible. They launched in Canada, France and then the U.K., with Australia focused on next.

Chris and the Kaplan sisters offer the following four tips when taking a business global:

Decide where to expand.

Navigate compliance.

Build a retail strategy.

Cross barriers (whether it be language, cultural or currency fluctuations).

Women play a big role in regional, national and international trade, competitiveness and economic growth. Governments, private sectors and nonprofits such as WEGG can contribute and support women in economic leadership and global trade..

For example, women entrepreneurs in Uganda have asked their government to address the issues of non-tariff barriers (NTB), saying they hinder women’s participation in cross border trade. NTBs are a form of restrictive trade where barriers to trade are established and take a form other than a tariff. Non-tariff barriers might include quotas, levies, embargoes, sanctions and other restrictions.

According to Aisha Natu, who writes a weekly column in a local Saudi Arabia paper, current regulations and bureaucracy is hampering the development of businesses run by women in Saudi Arabia. She says, “Women don’t only want to be seen, they want to actively participate and translate their aspirations into reality.”

About Aisha Natu:

She became the head of the board of directors for Eye to Eye Optics, a company that was started in 1990, and became one of the 27 fastest growing firms in Saudi Arabia. The company then split into three, which included optometry, training, and advertising and media. She now runs the three companies, which has 100 employees.

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wegg® Mission

Our mission is to educate, inspire and nurture women business owners and entrepreneurs worldwide on how to go global so they can run healthier businesses and create a new future for themselves, their families and their community.